The Purpose Of Air
by BellatrixLestrangey
Summary: Avatar World Week; Day 3 - Air. Azula discovers that she can bend air as well as fire and contemplates what that means for her.


Azula missed her fire terribly. It didn't matter that it would come back on three months, it never did, she still pines for it.

She doesn't know how it came to be, perhaps she was born like so. Every so often her element would shift and switch. She was a chameleon bender.

The transition between elements was always sudden and at random times; usually just when she was adjusting to her latest element. For it she was struggling to master any of them. It was hard to get practice when her time with each was so short.

Fire was the only thing she had any talent with. Fire is what she was born with it and it usually stuck around longer than the other elements.

Air however, was always fleeting. She hardly ever got to use it before it was gone again and she wondered if it had anything to do with the extinction of the air monks.

The wind, a natural breeze, gusted by. Azula felt it fluttered her hair and whispered in her ears. She drew in a deep breath and tried to catch it. But the gust evaded her.

Apparently, she didn't yet have the airbending talents to capture a natural gust. But she could craft her own easily enough.

She moved into a stance that was more complex than the one she usually tried. Lately she had been observing and copying the Avatar. He hadn't seemed to have caught on just yet, so she was learning plenty.

Before beginning, she double checked her surroundings. Not a soul was around, save for herself. She was still weary. She always was when it came to working with the elements she wasn't born with—when she wasn't using fire. She dreaded what would become of her, what her father would do with her, if he discovered the true extent of her abilities. The man already seemed to love the power he knew of, far too much.

She checked the area once more. Still, she was safely isolated.

The stance she entered was simple enough. It was actually rather reminiscent of a typical firebending attack. A leap into the air with a downward kick, but instead of fire, there came a burst of air. Azula smiled at her success. Her first try with the move had gone well. She liked to think that she was just as natural an airbender as she was a firebender. Airbending, she had come to find, in watching Aang, relied much on speed and agility. Two things that she vastly prided herself on.

The difficulty arose in remembering that Airbending was far more defensive than firebending. But then, it didn't really matter that much, she wasn't going to use airbending in battle.

She tried the move twice more, just to make sure she had it down. Her joy only diminished when it occurred to her, that she was going to have an issue when Ozai decided to send her off to battle again. She was running low on excuses as to why she wasn't firebending. Most of the time she'd gotten lucky enough to be sent out when her element shifted back into its original type. She knew that her luck would run dry eventually.

She truly hoped that the Fire Nation would win the war soon, so that she wouldn't have to worry about outing herself any longer.

As she toyed, absently with the air, she pondered deeper things. Things that somehow alarmed her more than being discovered. She wondered, again, if she had always had this ability. She wondered why and how. She wondered if it were at all possible gain control of the shift or if she was stuck cycling through them at random. Mostly, Azula pondered upon just what it meant. If the Avatar had all four elements to keep and restore balance to the world, what did that make her?

She stared at her hands; hands that glowed with fire, that shifted the ground, that stirred streams, that called breezes. And she was at a loss. Part of her wished that she never discovered the abilities at all. In some way, she understood the Avatar—there was a hefty weight that came with the other three elements. The ones she was almost certain that she wasn't meant to have.

If Aang had all four elements on his side to protect the world…

She furrowed her brows.

Balance. The world was balanced. That would mean…

An awful sort of feeling arose at the conclusion she had come to draw. If the world was balanced and Aang had the four elements to protect the world, then that would mean she had the four elements to aid her in destroying it.

All things considered, she supposed that it made sense; her blood relatives had destroyed the air nomads. As the natural wind tossed her hair, it dawned on her that she didn't want to unravel the universe. She didn't like to think herself evil. She wasn't evil, was she? She was just trying to bring her people glory. She continued to stare at her hands. Hands that could destroy or protect, depending. She was never one to question her place in the world, it had always seemed very clear…

But she couldn't say that it still was. Why did she have to go and think about things? It was always her downfall, thinking too much. Knowing too much.

She created a small ball of air in her hands and watches it swirl. In the same way that flickering a small flame was relaxing, watching the ball swirl was comforting. For a moment she could pretend that she had always been an airbender and always will be. For a moment it felt right and safe.

Though it is an illusion, in the back of her mind she knew that she would soon be a waterbender. It would seem that she cycled through the elements in the same sequence as the Avatar was reborn.

She stared harder at the swirling ball, she really had to stop thinking about this. But her mind was already racing so fast.

So quickly in fact, that she decided that she was going to find Aang.

But this time without the intention of capture. She would find him to make conversation, to reveal truths about herself. She would find him with the hopes that he could help her find her true purpose.


End file.
